Fritz Francois 

Fritz Francois, MD, MS, FACG earned a B.A. with commencement speaker honors from NYU College of Arts and Science. He completed his medical degree at the NYU School of Medicine, where he stayed for internship, residency, chief residency, and gastroenterology fellowship. During residency he founded the Department of Internal Medicine Organization to Nurture Diversity (D.I.A.M.O.N.D.) to address recruitment and retention of underrepresented minorities into the medicine training program. His teaching and leadership abilities led to his appointment as the Assistant Program Director for the internal medicine residency program.While on faculty at the NYU School of Medicine Dr Francois earned a Master of Science degree in Clinical Investigation. As a molecular epidemiologist, his research interests include esophageal disease, H. pylori, and colorectal cancer screening in minority populations.

Dr. Francois is the recipient of several national grants including an NIH career development award, a Robert Wood Foundation Clinical Investigator Award and the American College of Gastroenterology Clinical Research Award. His work has been presented nationally and he has received many honors including three American Society for GI Endoscopy Diversity Minority Research awards. In the spring of 2007 he was named as an international emerging leader in gastroenterology. Dr. Francois has continued to teach and to mentor students across the spectrum of training from junior high school to fellowship, in aneffort to help individuals to achieve their goals. In 2008 he became the Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs and Diversity at the NYU Langone Medical Center and has already launched the Patient-based Longitudinal Ambulatory Clinical Experience (P.L.A.C.E.) at the medical school which aims to put faces and stories to the diseases that students learn in the classroom and improve the cultural competency of physicians relative to the communities that they serve.

Soon after the earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010, Dr.Francois helped to establish and led H.E.A.R.T. (Haitian Effort and ReliefTeam), a multidisciplinary team of physicians, to Port-Au-Prince where they provided acute care as part of the relief mission. That same year he was inducted in the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society, he was recognized by his academic department with the humanism in medicine award, he was chosen by the Network Journal for the “40 under 40” award, he received the Academic Champion of Health Award from the National Medical Fellowships, and along with the H.E.A.R.T. team was recognized by the Hospital for Joint Disease with the Frauenthal award for service to human health.